32: Arthur Kay of Bio Bean - Award Winning Clean Fuel From Coffee Waste

Arthur Kay is the founder of Bio Bean and founding member of Fast Forward 2030. Arthur came up with the idea for bio-bean whilst studying architecture at The Bartlett, UCL, and in two years has raised several million in financing, built the world’s first coffee waste recycling factory and a team of twenty. He currently holds positions on a number of boards associated with social enterprise and green entrepreneurship and is a Fellow of RE, the RSA and IoD. In 2013, Shell named him ‘the UK’s most Innovative Entrepreneur,’ he was appointed as a ‘London Leader’ by Mayor Boris Johnson, in 2014 he became one of NESTA’s ‘New Radicals’, was named ’25 under 25 most influential Londoners’ by the Evening Standard and as '30 under 30' by Forbes Magazine. He was named the youngest ever Guardian Sustainable Business Leader of the Year. Bio-bean is an award-winning clean technology company, the first in the world to recycle used coffee grounds on an industrial scale. Bio-bean manufactures a range of biofuels and biochemicals from these recycled spent coffee grounds, saving businesses money, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and displacing conventional fossil fuels. Highlights of this episode: * How Arthur's interest in designing cities lead to the problem of coffee waste * What is Bio Bean? * How to turn a waste stream into something of value * Why creating a fuel and is it sustainable? * Looking for co-founders, financing for sustainable? * Challenge of circular economy products * Bio Bean's business model * Advise to environmental and social enterprise entrepreneurs Useful Links: Bio Bean [https://www.bio-bean.com/](https://www.bio-bean.com/) Arthur Kay's Linkedin - [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/akay1111](https://uk.linkedin.com/in/akay1111) Arthur Kay's Twitter - [https://twitter.com/arthurkay_](https://twitter.com/arthurkay_) Chapters: [01:22] How did Arthur discover the waste coffee problem? [04:34] Properties of coffee waste. [08:40] How does supply chain of Bio Bean more sustainable? [10:39] Solving a chemical engineering problem? [12:55] Running a capital intensive business [15:33] Scale of feedstock [17:24] Scaling coffee waste circular product [19:08] Advise to early stage companies [21:55] Mistake that Bio Bean made [22:31] The vision of Bio Bean